Here at South Jerusalem, Gershom and I sometimes feel like Statler and Waldorf, the two grumpy old critics in the balcony from The Muppet Show. Actually, my Muppet connection runs deep. I grew up identifying with Kermit (“It’s Not Easy Being Green”).
Then, when I came down with and survived a massive Group A Strep infection, I learned that Jim Henson, the Muppets’ creator, had been less lucky in his bout with the disease just six years earlier. And when I was in rehab, we had an occupational therapist who liked to get me and my fellow patients doing shoulder exercises to Kermit’s “Caribbean Amphibian”.
Last week, my daughter Mizmor brought home a set of Muppet Show DVDs from a neighbor and I walked in just as the Muppet classic “Mah Nà Mah Nà” was playing.
And here I had a 52-year old moment: I told Mizmor with great assurance that the original version of the song had been performed by Ish Kabibble, the comedian cornet player who had his heyday in the 1950s. I was certain that I’d heard him once on the radio doing the Mah Nà Mah Nàs.
But my investigative reporter instincts induced me to check my sources, and I found that I’d committed a blooper. It turns out that the original version was written for, of all things, a 1968 Italian soft-core porn film called Sweden: Heaven and Hell. “Mah Nà Mah Nà” was written by film-scorester Piero Umiliani. The best Youtube version of the original can be heard here, but be warned that it comes with some stills from the original film, not the kind of thing I want to post on this blog.
The moral of the story: don’t pontificate about pop songs sung by puppets. Next week: the original Rocky and Bullwinkle version of Das Lied von der Erde.
There goes my blissful ignorance. Thanks.
At last a solid argument for pornography – this case proves it DOES have a redeeming social value…though I have heard more memorable tunes.